this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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174
India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding (www.heise.de)
submitted 18 hours ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world
35 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Indian telecommunications authority, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has instructed eight messenger services to implement a permanent binding to inserted SIM cards. Affected are WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, ShareChat, as well as the Indian services Arattai, JioChat, and Josh. According to the directive, the companies must ensure within 90 days that their services can only be used with a physically inserted SIM card.

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[–] g8phcon2@k.fe.derate.me 68 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

I have an Indian colleague who told me he was threatened with arrest after a traffic stop for having element and conversations installed on his phone as the cop told him those are used by terrorists and he should just use WhatsApp

[–] g8phcon2@k.fe.derate.me 36 points 15 hours ago

He thought terrorists also use email and drink water, but decided not to tell the cop that.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 33 points 14 hours ago

And that's the truest, just unpleasant, answer to all the talk about new messenger services and emerging replacements.

Power doesn't care about rules. Power does care that you don't have a way to communicate freely. Power punishes you if you try to find a way.

Social problems are not solved by technical means. Or, for the sake of correctness, - they are, but those technical means are called weapons of war. To change the balance of power so that your wishes were respected.

[–] Nanook@lemmy.zip 29 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Why would a traffic cop be looking at his phones chat apps?!

[–] Honytawk@feddit.nl 6 points 9 hours ago

They were trading pokemons in pokemon go?

[–] UnspecificGravity@infosec.pub 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Cops are doing this in the US too.

[–] fuzzzerd@programming.dev 3 points 3 hours ago

I'm not sure, but I assume it's because a GPS app is running on the dash somewhere, and the app keeps the phone unlocked and visible?

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Need to start obscuring what is installed on devices. Terminal based communication and host it on a remote server that you connect to with SSH so when they inspect your phone there is nothing there.

At least if I had something to hide I would be way ahead of dumb laws like this.